Collectibles become attractions at at suburban Chicago museums

January 09, 2013|By Kerry Reid, Special to the Tribune

Hummel figurines on display at the Donald Stephens Museum of Hummels in Rosemont. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)

Most museums have rooms devoted to specialized collections. But few focus as obsessively (and extensively) on a particular brand of cultural artifact as these two suburban museums. Both the Donald E. Stephens Museum of Hummels in Rosemont and the American Toby Jug Museum in Evanston grew out of their original founders' love of the respective figures housed within.

Stephens, the late first mayor of the village of Rosemont, began collecting Hummels in the 1960s and donated much of his collection to the village in 1984. After being in various locations over the years, the museum opened in a strip mall on Higgins Road in 2011.

But according to former museum manager Betty Rossi, who still volunteers for the organization, the drop in the economy and the sale of the Goebel Hummel factory in Germany in 2008 has had an impact on the museum's attendance and on Hummel collectors in general. Nowadays, notes Rossi, the museum is more likely to get calls from people hoping to unload their Hummels for a price (the museum doesn't buy or sell Hummels) as they are from enthusiasts who simply want to take in one of the largest collection of Hummels in the world — more than 5,000 pieces. Current manager Nicole Lombardi says that foot traffic is way down for the museum, which may get about a dozen visitors during an average week. The museum is mostly funded through the housing department of the village of Rosemont.

By contrast, despite its tucked-away basement location on a busy street in Evanston, the American Toby Jug Museum, founded by Stephen Mullins, has about a thousand visitors per year who peruse more than 7,000 mugs and jugs, some dating back to the 18th century. Mullins, who first began collecting the famous jugs with figures of literary and historical personages as a boy in summer camp in Canada in the 1940s, has also, in collaboration with David C. Fastenau, written two exhaustive books on Toby and character jugs and mugs. The American Toby Jug Museum is now run as a nonprofit; almost the entire collection was donated by Mullins.

There are, Mullins quickly points out, distinctions between characters and Tobies and mugs and jugs, despite the use of "Toby mug" as a generic catch-all. Properly speaking, jugs have a pouring spout and usually a top, while mugs are wide-rimmed drinking vessels. Tobies are full-bodied figures, as opposed to the face-only "character" mugs and jugs.

But a tour of both museums reveals a surprising variety of figures created over the years.

In brief, Hummel figurines grew from original designs by Sister Maria Innocentia Hummel, born Berta Hummel, whose drawings of adorable apple-cheeked children engaged in various innocent activities caught the attention of Franz Goebel, owner of a porcelain company. Goebel began manufacturing the now-world-famous figurines in the 1930s. Though one might think that the moppets seem the perfect distillation of master-race ideals, Hitler's regime accused her of depicting Germany's youth as "brainless sissies." The sister died of tuberculosis in 1946, but the legacy of "Das Hummele" or "the busy bee," as she was called, grew as American servicemen in Germany began sending the ceramic figures home following World War II.

Nothing so controversial darkens the brightly lit Rosemont museum, where Rossi points out rare items, such as a one-of-a-kind figurine — the last, she says, collected by Stephens before his death in 2007 — of Cinderella surrounded by four birds. "The rest of them have three," says Rossi. That is the level of detail discerning collectors quickly note — but that would easily go by a casual visitor. And, says Rossi, younger people are simply not interested in collecting Hummels the way their parents and grandparents were.

But it's not all cherubic urchins on the glass shelves. The collection also includes Hummels that depict Norman Rockwell scenarios and Looney Tunes characters, along with wood carvings and glass plates. The collection features a one-of-a-kind set of figures that shows the process of creating a ceramic Hummel, from molds to finished figurines.

Mullins' museum, in addition to the myriad Falstaffs and Churchills (the latter, Mullins wryly notes, "is the most popular man in clay") boasts mugs and jugs with characters from popular culture, including "Star Wars" and various Disney icons.

Though the Hummel staff declined to put a firm dollar value on their collection, Mullins says that the American Toby Jug Museum has items whose value range from $1 to $50,000. Among the most valuable are a series of Royal Doulton prototypes, many of which never made it to final manufacture. Mullins' latest book is "A Century of Royal Doulton Character and Toby Jugs," but he points out that, contrary to popular belief, Royal Doulton was never the only manufacturer of Tobies. Indeed, one becomes overwhelmed by the varieties of jugs and mugs across manufacturers, materials, and countries of origin that fill the shelves in the museum.